US Route 89 Roadside Attraction: String Lake Trail

We were fortunate on our first visit to Grand Teton National Park to be there in the fall when the leaves were turning. After a couple of days of exploring the park, we discovered the String Lake Trail. It proved ideal for viewing the trees in fall dress from up close and at a distance.

String Lake is a small body of water between two much larger ones—Leigh Lake to the north and Jenny Lake to the south. The String Lake Trail crosses the Leigh Lake outlet and the Jenny Lake inlet as it circumnavigates String Lake. The hike around the lake is 3.4 miles of easy trail with an elevation change of only 200 feet. Most of the trail is along the shore but it climbs up the slope of the mountain on the west side affording a panoramic view of the lake and the Gros Ventre Mountains on the east side of Jackson Hole.

As we followed the trail we saw flashes of color across the lake on the mountain slope. String Lake is very shallow and the bottom is visible beneath the reflection. A pair of kayakers played around a small island. Reaching the other side, we hiked along the slope among the brilliant orange and gold trees.

The String Lake Trail is a leisurely way to spend a couple of hours in the beautiful landscape of Grand Teton National Park. It was an especially beautiful way to celebrate my birthday on a fall morning.

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The giant saguaro cactus is the universal symbol of the American west and are found in a relatively small area in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. The park is divided in to two districts to the east and west of Tucson. Drive though the park at sunset to experience the beauty of the towering saguaros silhouetted against mountains rising above broad valleys.

Grand Teton National Park

The Teton Range rises nearly a mile above Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the valley below the eastern face of the mountains. A dozen of its peaks are over 12,000 in elevation and with no foothills to obscure the view they can be seen reflected in the large lakes at their base. There is no more spectacular and iconic view any where in the Rockies.

﻿﻿Grand Canyon National Park

Grand Canyon National Park is really two parks in one. The North Rim which is nearly a thousand feet higher than the South Rim is only accessible in summer. Standing ten miles north of the Colorado River, the view from the rim is of long side canyons and the towering buttes they have carved. The South Rim stands a mile above the Colorado with vertigo-inducing views of the colorful rock layers that record a billion years of the Earth’s geological history.

Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park in Montana was established in 1910. In 1932 it was linked to Canada’s Waterton Lakes National Park to form the world’s first International Peace Park. The parks are renowned for their glacier-carved mountains and deep lakes. Here at the narrowest point in the Rocky Mountains, ecosystems from the Pacific Northwest, the northern forests and the Great Plains converge to form a unique community of plants and animals found no where else in North America.

Bryce Canyon National Park

Despite the name, Utah’s Bryce Canyon is not a canyon but an amphitheater created by erosion on the eastern edge of a high plateau. The erosion of the soft rock has left a spectacular array of red, orange and white hoodoos below the rim of the plateau.

Zion National Park

Carved by the North Fork of the Virgin River, Zion Canyon in Utah is fifteen miles long and up to a half mile deep. The bottom of the canyon is filled with stream-side vegetation and many hiking trails lead into side canyons with hanging gardens and waterfalls.

Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone in Wyoming is America’s first national park and nowhere in the world is there a larger concentration of geothermal features. In addition to the geysers, hot springs, mud pots and fumaroles, the park abounds with wildlife including moose, elks, bison, bears and wolfs.